Why Should Marketers Care About Keyword Difficulty?
Keyword difficulty is an essential process in an SEO campaign.
Here are a few reasons why this approach is critical for marketers and SEO specialists:
Valuable Approach for Higher Rankings
If your goal is to rank high for your keywords of interest, then keyword difficulty is an important process to follow. However, it should only be a single part of your overall SEO strategy.
Examines Various Factors
The keyword difficulty process takes various factors into consideration.
While many factors make up a keyword’s difficulty, the process primarily looks at the following:
- Competitor strength.
- Quality of website content.
- Your site’s domain authority.
- The searcher’s intent.
Using all of these metrics with a close evaluation, the keyword difficulty process provides clarity on how difficult it is to rank for a specific keyword.
Valuable for New Businesses
The truth of the matter is that keyword difficulty isn’t a process that all organizations should follow.
If you’re a well-established business that already has high search rankings for several competitive keywords, you should focus more on search volume instead.
With a website that’s already successful and has a high domain authority, there’s a good chance you already rank well for difficult keywords.
That said, you’ll want to turn your focus to reaching as many people as possible — thus, targeting keywords with the most searches.
On the other hand, new and fresh businesses should pay closer attention to keyword difficulty.
If you’re a small business that’s just starting out, it can be very challenging to rank for high-difficulty keywords.
In that case, targeting low-difficulty keywords is the smart move. Additionally, in this instance, experts advise not paying attention to search volume. To get established on the web and boost your domain authority over time, ranking high for keywords is vital — even if the search volume is low.
Which Factors Determine Keyword Difficulty?
As mentioned previously, several factors help to determine a keyword’s difficulty.
By understanding these factors, you can learn more about what it takes to rank high in Google search results.
Here is more information about these factors:
- Website Domain Authority
- The domain authority of your website has a huge impact on the success of your search rankings.
For instance, if you have a website with a high DA, you’ll have a better chance at ranking for keywords of more difficulty.
The same works on the other side of the spectrum. The lower the DA, the harder it’ll be ranking for high-difficulty keywords.
If you’re a new business with a brand new website, targeting low-difficulty keywords is encouraged.
As a new business starts to rank for these lower-difficulty terms, the DA should increase over time. When that happens, the organization can start targeting keywords at a greater difficulty.
Once you have an established website with a high domain authority, keyword difficulty starts to lose its importance.
With a high level of credibility, ranking for any keyword is more feasible, no matter the difficulty.
That said, when established with a high DA, you’ll want to focus more on keywords with the highest search volume.
Searcher’s Intent
Searcher’s intent involves the reasoning behind why an internet user is searching for something in the first place.
While Google puts a strong emphasis on this factor, it’s a vital component of keyword difficulty.
As you’re working on your SEO campaign, be sure to pay close attention to your searcher’s intent.
Think about why your target audience would search for a certain keyword, but also focus on the action you want the searcher to take.
Content Quality
The quality of content on your website means everything.
As Google is smarter than ever before, its algorithm is very successful at detecting websites with exceptional quality.
That said, it’s no wonder why content quality is a driving factor for keyword difficulty.
It’s important to note that it isn’t only about high-quality writing. In fact, excellent content also involves effective imaging, data points, relevancy, and reputable links.
Strength of Competitors
Keyword difficulty also heavily relies on competitor strength.
For example, if your brand new website is targeting the same keywords as an established business with a high DA, you’ll have a harder time ranking for those keywords.
As you’re doing keyword research, the high-difficulty keywords you’re seeing are probably difficult because other reputable businesses are already ranking for them.
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